


Brave As A Noun

by HonestlyDeceptive



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Dubious Morality, Dubious Sanity, Implied Time Travel, Self-Hatred, kakashi is sad and angry and done with your shit, slight gore, sort of?? it's implied too I guess, tell me if I've forgotten to tag shit cause idk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-18
Updated: 2018-02-18
Packaged: 2019-03-20 19:01:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13724019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HonestlyDeceptive/pseuds/HonestlyDeceptive
Summary: "The world is going to end in less then ten years. Fix it.""Wonderful," Kakashi replies. "I can't wait. Anything else to add to that?"Alternatively: Saving the world is hard when you're unsure of your own sanity.





	Brave As A Noun

**Author's Note:**

> uhh this has actually been sitting unpublished for a while in my notes (mostly cause I'm self conscious of my skills but also I'm busy) but I've decided to post it now cause, like, why the fuck not

 

 

_I could go off the deep end_

 

If Kakashi had a ryō for every time he'd suffered through a hallucination caused by his own intense guilt complex and dissolving mental health, he'd be two hundred ryō richer and zero percent happier.

So, as it is, when he's staring blankly at the wall in his hospital, and a ragged, older version of himself suddenly pops into existence, he doesn't react more than a double blink and a twitch in his left pinkie toe.

"The world is going to end less than ten years. Fix it."

"Wonderful," Kakashi replies. "I can't wait. Anything else you want to add to that?"

Other Kakashi crinkles his brows and cocks his head. It makes the shredded mask hanging from his face flap slightly and Kakashi's eyes are drawn to the movement. "Ah. That wasn't quite what I wanted."

Kakashi hums, noncommittal. His dark grey eyes are still fixed on the dangling piece of Other Kakashi's mask. It looks damp, and smells kind of funny. Blood?

"What's the date?"

"Don't know. Been in a coma."

Kakashi sinks back into his pillow, suddenly wondering if there's a jutsu that can change the colour of his sheets. White's such a dull, pure colour. "You don't know?" Other Kakashi asks carefully.

Kakashi sighs. God he hates talking — at least it's easier when it's just himself. "Been asleep for three days. Woke up and they drugged me 'cause I tried to leave in the middle of surgery. I think," he adds, and Other Kakashi pinches the bridge of his nose. Oh look, two of his fingers are complete bone.

Gross.

"I'm twenty three, though, if that helps."

Other Kakashi hums and wanders over to the empty chair beside his bed. He tugs at it and Kakashi is fascinated when it actually moves. He didn't know his hallucinations could move things in the real world. Maybe it is his haywire chakra reacting to-

"Shut up," Other Kakashi snaps, glaring at him, pupils narrowed- wait, never mind. He doesn't have any. Odd. His eyes are just flat silver disks, glowing slightly in the dim light.

Silver was his father's favourite colour. He misses him.

"It's hard to control, well, this," Other Kakashi says and gestures towards his head. "Haven't had the chance to grow accustomed to it. Difficult to tune out everyone else."

"Wish I could do that."

"What?"

"Tune out everyone else."

Other Kakashi leans back in his chair, producing a tattered Icha Icha out of nowhere. "Don't worry," he dismisses. "You'll learn soon enough."

"In the mean time," his eyes flicker to him again, unnerving in every way. Kakashi can't stop himself from shrinking back, just a bit. "Get better soon. We have things to discuss."

He smiles, sharp and dangerous, an unnaturally sharp canine peeking out behind chapped lips. And then he disappears.

A nurse comes in a moment later, visibly startling at seeing him awake and fully alert. "Hatake-san! When did you wake? How are you feeling?"

He forces his eyes away from the empty chair. There's flecks over blood and dirt on the seat, and it smells like Other Kakashi did — of earth, coffee and death. He looks at the nurse.

"I feel high as utter fuck," he says seriously.

 

* * *

 

Kakashi doesn't try to hide his flinch when Other Kakashi slinks out from behind the fridge, silver eyes glowing and nails scrapping softly again the kitchen counter.

He's too tired.

"Rin, huh," Other Kakashi begins with. "Those ones are always the roughest. Throw out those purple demons you have growing on the window sill and they'll show up less often."

Kakashi sucks in a slow breath, holds it in until his vision starts to blur, and then releases it sharply, shoulders relaxing and spine losing its tension. He doesn't reply.

Other Kakashi doesn't encourage him to.

He wanders around his apartment, inspecting his bookshelf filled with everything from crappy romance to detailed history to ridiculous porn. He hums and 'hah's over the scribbled drawing hastily taped to his bedroom wall; a boy with red eyes and black hair, a girl with dirty and blood soaked skin, a graffitied house burning under purple flames, a wicked gold fox laughing over a crying child.

Kakashi tosses an arm over his eyes. His head hurts. "Why're you here."

A gentle padding of footsteps as Other Kakashi moves to glance out the window. "I told you we had things to discuss, no?"

"I try not to talk to my hallucinations too often."

Other Kakashi laughs scratchily; in the back of his throat like he's unused to doing it. "You're not doing a great job then, are you?"

He moves his arm and is greeted with piercing silver eyes and glowing, gravity defying hair. His heartbeat increases and his other hand, still by his side, twitches towards the kunai hidden under his mattress.

Other Kakashi grins like he can hear it and knows exactly what he tried to do.

"The world is going to end in less than ten years."

The scent of earth and coffee is almost overwhelming. Death is just a faint whiff.

"The Gods are betting on our soul."

Cheeky, unrepentant laughter echoes in his ears, followed by muffled giggles and the flash of an amused smile.

"What are you going to do?"

 

* * *

 

He throws out the violets growing outside his window. They were already dying, so it's not much of a waste.

He never cared enough to save them.

There's a brief, delicate touch on his shoulder, followed by a softly murmured, "Well done."

He sits by the window and waits for sunrise.

 

* * *

 

"You should try out your sharingan," Other Kakashi says one day when he's searching the market for some fresh fruit. He comes from the shadow of an ANBU patrolling the rooftops, silent and deadly. "I want to see if my presence has affected it."

He hums, purchases a weeks worth of pears and tomatoes, and shunshins away.

He's not sure why he keeps indulging in his newest hallucination but it keeps him occupied when Sarutobi bans him from the mission desk to let him heal properly.

Other Kakashi follows him to Training Grounds Nine slowly, the grass underneath his feet turning frosty and stiff in spite of the warm summer's breeze. Kakashi pretends it doesn't bother him.

He places his goods under the shade of a tree, walks into the centre of the training ground and tugs off his headband, blinking as his chakra suddenly surges to his eye and some of the leaves and branches start moving in slow motion.

Other Kakashi heads towards him and Kakashi finds he can't predict anything about the hallucination which is-

Normal.

Because Other Kakashi is a hallucination. Because Actual Kakashi is very unstable and kind of needs professional help but. Nah.

Other Kakashi studies his sharingan eye for a moment, and then raises a hand. His fingernails are black, sharp and slightly worn. Kakashi wonders about his own normal stubby nails.

"May I?" Other Kakashi asks, tilting his head just a bit.

Kakashi crosses his arms over his chest. "You're a figment of my desperate imagination."

Other Kakashi smiles. "I'll take that as a yes."

He taps the skin just below his sharingan eye and the world explodes in pain.

 

* * *

 

When Kakashi comes to, Other Kakashi is settled happily beneath the shade of a tree, munching on a pear and reading Icha Icha.

Rin's there too.

She fusses over him as he sits up, arms shaking under the weight of his own body. "Go slow, Kakashi-kun! Goodness, you're as bad as Obito sometimes!"

She laughs, airy and unbothered. Kakashi ignores the gaping, drooling wound in her chest and follows her instructions, gritting his teeth when pain flares in his head and cursing under his breath.

"Pull your knees up," Rin instructs, hands hovering over him but not touching. Never touching. "And place you head between your knees, keeping your eyes closed. Go slow, Kakashi-kun!" When he follows her orders she starts to smile, brown eyes warm and alive, "Great! Now we need to-"

Five fingers claw through the space she kneels, two pure bone and the others battered and fleshy, the thumb almost pure, dark purple from vicious bruising. Rin evaporates with a soft sigh and Kakashi blinks away tears.

Other Kakashi crouches in front of him. "Don't get so caught up in her," he chides. "She's not going to be nearly as forgiving tonight, now is she?"

"I don't like you," Kakashi informs him. His mouth is dry and tastes faintly of vomit. He hasn't bothered opening his sharingan eye.

Other Kakashi smirks. "No one does."

It's quiet for a bit. Kakashi sits with his head between his knees, taking in slow breaths and releasing them a tad faster than necessary. The wind ruffles his hair, gentle and soft and kind and he kind of wants to curl up under the sunlight and take a nap.

The scent of earth and coffee moves closer, gets stronger, and something that feels almost like fingers cards gently through his hair, hesitant. Kakashi is 65% sure it's just a leaf and his depraved mind fucking with him.

"Open you eye," Other Kakashi coaxes. "I have to make sure I didn't just disable you. C'mon, open up."

Against his will, he opens his eye.

Nothing happens.

There's no surge of chakra as Obito's eye tries to devour his chakra reserves, there's no stomach rolling double vision where half his vision moves normal and half of it moves too fucking slow. It's just... normal.

Kakashi is fucking terrified.

Other Kakashi hums, a pleased look in his wicked silver eyes. "I have to say, that experiment went very well."

"What the fuck has happened to me," is what Kakashi means to say but all that comes out is a strangled noise followed by a pained moan.

"Feed some chakra to his eye. Not a lot, just a smidgen."

Half his world blooms in slow motion yet again.

"Feed it some more," Other Kakashi encourages. "Not too much, just a little bit."

It looks like time is standing still but Kakashi instinctively knows that it's just moving extremely, _extremely_  slow.

"One last bit." Other Kakashi sounds gleeful. Actual Kakashi hates it.

A tree thirty feet away from him pops out of existence.

Holy fucking shit.

Other Kakashi is inspecting the torn up dirt the tree used to be rooted to, muttering under his breath, poking with bone fingers, sounding like an Uchiha just presented with a new fire jutsu — which is to say, all too fucking happy.

Kakashi wobbles to his feet, deactivating- oh dear god _deactivating his transplanted sharingan oh **fuck**_ -

He dives for his groceries and shunshins away, ignoring the impossibly half eaten pear and the blood dripping from Obito's eye.

He's never been so scared before in his entire life.

 

* * *

 

He spends the next week in a daze.

He sleeps more than he needs to, eats more than his body is used to, and huddles away in the biology and medical section of the library, for once wearing his headband properly because _there's no need to hide a fully functioning normal eye_ -

In the end, he doesn't achieve anything other than learning that (a) what ever the hell happened to his eye is actually fucking impossible and hasn't been even tried in theory because the number of willing eye transplants Uchihas have gone through can be counted on one hand, and (b) what ever the fuck Other Kakashi is, he is _not_ a hallucination.

But it's kind of nice to be able to see fully again. In a sort of terrifying way, that is, but it's still nice, of course.

He casts a very subtle, very tricky genjutsu on his eye to keep unwanted questions away from him. He doesn't know how long he'll be able to keep it up but hopefully he has a solid excuse by the time he's caught.

Other Kakashi doesn't show up at all, but he knows he's there because books keep disappearing and reappearing on his shelf and there are a few odd drawings added to his collection; a man with wild black hair and vivid purple eyes kneeling atop two bodies, and a young girl with bubblegum pink hair and a cracked sword in her hands.

Kakashi contemplates purchasing frames for all his drawings the next time he steps out the door.

 

* * *

 

"What are you?" Kakashi murmurs. "Why are you here?"

He's sitting atop sensei's head, legs dangling over the edge of sensei's hair, a cool breeze ruffling his clothes and bringing out goosebumps.

He can never tell when Other Kakashi is here. Or when he arrives. Or when he leaves. He can't tell anything about that man- wait, no, that's _him_. He's him. So he can't tell anything about _himself_ and how sad is that?

"It's very sad," Other Kakashi answers from his place curled up under sensei's right eyebrow. "And it may get sadder, if you don't do what I say."

Kakashi peers down at him. "Can you read my thoughts?"

The idea isn't as terrifying as it should be.

"Hmm," Other Kakashi says and pure silver meets stormy grey under the moonlight. "Only when I feel like it."

He feels... he feels like he's been peeled open; placed under a microscope and studied until everyone is bored and knows more than they need to but they still won't. Stop. _Looking_.

He kind of wishes he at least had gotten dressed before he fled from Rin and Obito to hide with sensei. Sweatpants, a medical mask and a tank top aren't very suitable for such a cool night.

"What are you?" He asks again because what else can he ask?

Other Kakashi sighs and picks at his own outfit — tattered, worn and reeking of blood and something completely inhuman. "I don't really know anymore," he admits. "I was human. But then I made a deal to save the others and now I'm..."

Something like grief flickers through those cursed silver eyes.

"...and now I am not."

Kakashi crawls down off sensei's head, wriggling until he's seated opposite of Other Kakashi, under sensei's left brow with the moonlight shining on him. Other Kakashi tilts his head to look at him and suddenly there's a dark aura surrounding him, bringing forth death and frost and unimaginable power.

Kakashi blinks. The aura disappears and it's just him, alone, tucked inside sensei's left eye, cold and scared and resigned to his fate.

"What-"

He licks his lips under his mask and he tastes blood.

"What do you want me to do?"

Fingers of bone run along his arm and Other Kakashi laughs softly into his ear. "I'm glad you've finally agreed to help."

Kakashi isn't but he's never had much a say in how his life goes.

 

* * *

 

Other Kakashi is fucking _insane_ and Actual Kakashi really should have expected it.

Kakashi pushes the heel of his palms into his eyes until he's seeing spots. "Dude, I really can't just _kill_ Shimura fucking Danzo."

"Why not?" Other Kakashi asks, affronted. "You just walk up to the old bastard, chidori the absolute fuck out of him, and walk away. Ta dah." He sits back on the couch, taking a sip of beer. "I really don't see the problem."

"Jesus fucking Christ," Kakashi mutters and it says a lot about his life that he's getting hammered at six am with an alternate version of himself who's trying to get him to save the world ten years before it even actually ends.

"Fine. Use a clone if you need to. Plan's still solid."

" _Jesus fucking Christ_ ," he repeats because that's really what the situation calls for. Swearing, invoking a name of a god he doesn't worship, and painful emphasis. Also alcohol. Lots and lots of alcohol.

He downs his bottle of beer and reaches for another.

"I need a plan, dumbass," he snarls. "You might be a bloody god and fresh from a war but I haven't seen war for over ten years. I need a back plan. Contacts. Safe houses. Shit like that so everything doesn't come crumbling down."

Is he- is he fucking pouting?! Really?!

"Unbelievable," Kakashi says and throws his arms up in the air. Beer sloshes out of the bottle and stains the carpet. "Quit pouting, princess, and start planning."

Other Kakashi's pout intensifies but he conjures a notebook and pen out of midair, preparing himself. "Alright, geez, I forgot I was such an angry drunk."

"We're not an angry drunk, I'm just suicidal and impatient. Now get writing."

Other Kakashi sighs. "Fine. Don't call me princess, by the way."

"What else am I supposed to call you?" Kakashi asks. "We're both Kakashi and I refuse to give up my name to a man who doesn't even have a complete left foot."

Other Kakashi rolls his eyes.

 

* * *

 

Three hours later, still drunk, he breaks into the Hokage's Office while Other Kakashi provides a distraction and illegally files himself a three week leave for 'personal reasons' before hopping back out the window, startled shouts, barking dogs and his own insane cackling ringing in his ears.

 

* * *

 

He makes sure he's seen the next day, when he's making his way out of the village — tosses Kotetsu and his friend who's name Kakashi can never remember a short wave, hides behind a bush when Gai tries to assault him for a challenge, whispers some goodbyes to the memorial stone.

He walks for three days, stopping only when he's especially tired to set up camp and eat, reading Icha Icha to pass the time. He doesn't give any hint of his destination, hums softly to himself as he washes his clothes in streams, and curses under his breath when he fails to start a fire on the first try.

Oh the fifth day, the subtle chakra signature following finally leaves.

On the seventh day, the clone stops and disperses.

Hidden in his apartment in Konoha, Actual Kakashi raises an eyebrow and stands, brushing crumbs and nonexistent dirt off his pants. Leaning against the wall, Other Kakashi straightens, bored expression shifting to anticipating.

"Ready?" He asks.

Kakashi doesn't answer and slips silently out the window, henge firmly in place.

Other Kakashi chuckles softly behind him, eyes glowing, canines lengthening, lips twisting into a smirk.

"This going to be fun."

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> comments and constructive criticism is always appreciated. it's been quite a while since I last posted a fic and my writing style has changed a fair bit, I think, so... yeah
> 
> :D


End file.
